


all the way to the sun

by perfidiousalbion



Category: Doc Martin (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Multi, yearning is my name and longing is my game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:54:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23854921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perfidiousalbion/pseuds/perfidiousalbion
Summary: Al watched Joe's back after he’d turned back around. He was still in uniform, and looked reassuringly solid. He hummed lowly, almost inaudibly, as he cooked. The silence settled around them both like a creature curling up for the evening.
Relationships: Al Large/Joe Penhale
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	all the way to the sun

**Author's Note:**

> An entirely self-serving fic for a criminally underwritten pairing. Almost wholly inspired by an intense dislike of Burt Large. I have a lot of opinions about him as a character, a lot of love for Al and Joe, and too much time on my hands. Voila.  
> Set around the end of season six.

His Dad still called him boy. He’d never paid much attention to this before—such terms of endearment were as much a part of his idea of a father figure that he’d never questioned it. Al Large: boy. He even felt faintly embarrassed at any admittance that he was a grown man—offering to drive someone, talking about girlfriends, rent, getting a proper job. As though to admit that he were an independent autonomous person was to imply to his father that perhaps he shouldn’t expect free labour round the clock.

“Don’t you think that’s perhaps what the cause of your underlying distress might be? Or some version of it?” Ruth paused and took a sip of her tea, still fixing him with a clear, unwavering eye. 

Al looked at his hands where they lay laced on the table and lifted his fingers so that the whole fleshy construction flapped like a mutated bird. “You’re trying to distract me,” he said, and took one of her rooks with his pawn. She smiled.

*

He still thought about Pauline, sometimes. How bright her hair was, and her smile, and how she’d seem to fill a room just by existing in it. Sometimes, when he remembered a book he’d read years ago, he’d remember it in images, as though he’d seen a film. He’d hear it with music, dialogue, diegetic sound. Memories of Pauline were like that. Her hair couldn’t have been that red, they couldn’t have even spent that much time together, and they certainly hadn’t ridden for hours over the moors on her orange scooter, coloured as summer. But they might as well have. He missed her, sometimes.

Morwenna was lovely. He didn’t tell Ruth about his feelings for her. He could see, already, the corvine tilt of her head as she would insinuate that his fixation on yet another medical receptionist was an attempt to fill a void, and that part of it was because he just kind of felt like he should. Or something.

He told Joe. But then Joe didn’t count.

*

Three weeks before he was ousted from his Dad’s house, he decided to take an online course on Ancient Philosophy. A whim, really. Something so ridiculously unpractical that it felt like a luxury. And besides, some of the ideas were interesting. Stoicism. Acceptance, even if your lot is one that pains you.

In the middle of the first lecture he’d heard banging on the roof, then swearing, then the power had gone down. Later he found out his Dad had got out there to fiddle with the TV wiring and knocked the cables. Or something. All Al noticed at the time was his own face, staring back at him from the black pool of the screen.

Al Large, with his gormless, asymmetrical face, thinking he could improve himself. Thinking he could be anything but the Large son. Boy.

He quit the course and was pleased to receive an eighty percent refund.

*

A month later he walked through Morwenna’s sitting room to make himself a cup of tea, trying to pretend he hadn’t been sitting in his room for two hours trying to convince himself it wasn’t taking liberties. She had changed into her pyjamas and was sitting with her knees up, watching a film. Her hair was down. He realised he’d never seen it like that before.

He started to say good evening, realised it would be too formal, and decided to stick with hi instead. “Good hi,” he said.

“Good hi to you too, Al Large. You making tea?”

Cleared his throat. “Yeah.”

She stuck her arm out behind her chair without looking away from her film. “Make us one then, would you? And a digestive? You can help yourself to those. And buy some more next time you’re in the shop. Also kitchen roll.”

He rooted around in the cupboard, taking his time. The kettle was old, and boiled slowly.

When enough time had passed that leaning on the kitchen counter was beginning to feel less pensive and more predatory, he cleared his throat again. “What you watching?”

“ _Ben-Hur._ You know it?”

“Yeah. You watching it because of whatshisname? The hot one?”

She cricked her neck and glanced at him briefly. “No. He’s not my type. I like the bloody bits. Look, that guy’s about to get trampled by his own horses.”

The guy on screen got trampled by his own horses.

“Here.” Al handed her a mug and a biscuit.

“Brilliant, thanks. Wait, don’t go—this is the best bit. He’s about to win.”

Al perched on the edge of the sofa, shoes still on and flat on the ground. He pointed his head toward the screen and watched the reflection of Morwenna’s face in the black window. “Plato believed the human soul was like a charioteer driving two horses. One black and one white.”

Morwenna dunked her biscuit in her tea and pulled it just before the soggy part broke. There was an extended silence as she licked the melted chocolate off. Al bent his head and watched the ripples in his tea. “What, like an analogy for race or something?”

“I—no. More like a good horse and a bad horse.”

“Ah. Well, in that case I’ve got three horses.”

“Yeah?”

“A good horse, a bad horse, and a horse that wants another cup of tea.”  
Al laughed despite himself. “Already?”

She waggled her mug at him. “Dance for your supper, Al Large.”

*

A few weeks after that, he was sitting at Joe Penhale’s desk, manning the phones.

“I’m not saying it’s life or death,” Joe had said, hovering in the doorway before he left. “I’m just implying it. So don’t quote me on it. But a policeman’s always on duty, Al. And while I’m out on official police business, you’re like the Robin to my Batman. I’m not saying the fate of the whole village lies in your hands, but…well.” Then he had left to get an ice cream and sit in his car watching over the beach for a while.

The phone rang. Al picked up. “Portwenn Police,” he said.

“Is this Joe Penhale?”

“No. But I can take a message.”

“Ah, good-o. Tell him he’s a wanker and I’m not paying my parking ticket.”

“Ok.” He put the phone down and pulled a pad of paper from a drawer. _Joe Penhale’s a wanker,_ he wrote. He put it inside a speech bubble coming from a walrus with a dunce hat.

“Sidekick!”

Al crumpled up the paper in his fist and turned to look at Joe standing in the doorway, an ice cream cone in each hand. One was well-licked and the other was trailing over his fingers and onto his sleeve.

“Yours is a bit drippy, but what else is the uniform for, eh, if not absorbing vanilla ice cream?”

Al took it and began to feel a bit guilty about telling ‘Joe-no-friends’ jokes with Pauline.

*

“Even asleep, a policeman’s on duty, Al. My ears will be constantly peeled in the night, and as you’re sleeping under my roof, I expect yours to be too.”

Joe was standing in a doorway again—Al’s bedroom, this time. His pyjamas were matching, and stripy. He had a hot water bottle in a fluffy cover under one arm. He saw Al looking at it and brandished it with one hand. “Only idiots aren’t man enough to sleep with a heat source, Al Large. My father always used to say, ‘would you rather look stupid or die of hypothermia?’ And the answer was look stupid, Al. Every time.”

Al was quite glad he had no friends to make a joke about that statement with. An Al by himself could afford to be kinder, with no one to perform for. “We have spare electric blankets at home—I mean, my Dad has some at his place. I could bring one here for you if you like.”

Joe straightened and looked, quite unusually, a little lost for words. “I—that’s kind of you, Al. But they’re a fire hazard. So’s this, by the way.” He crossed the room in a couple of steps and braced one hand on Al’s mattress to lean across him. Moved the glass of water on his nightstand away from a plughole. Al exhaled sharply, accidentally, and was so close to Joe that he could see the hairs on the back of his neck move.

Joe stood and nodded, once, briskly, before leaving the room. He switched the light off as he went and Al lay in that same position for several minutes, hardly daring to breathe.

He hadn’t been that close to anyone since Pauline. It had been too long, that was all. And besides—Joe was Joe. And he was Al Large.

*

Ruth Ellingham did not have the same towering reputation for brusqueness as her nephew, but Al thought she well deserved one. The woman was a bloody slave driver—and one who’d analyse your unwillingness to work, at that.

He told her that as he sat at her kitchen table, drinking a cup of tea she’d made for him and waiting to see if his fix for her broadband had worked.

She laughed in that quick, fox-like way she had. “You seem happier, Al. You have for the past week or so. Anything changed, in the life of the Large boy?”

Al felt his good mood leaving him like sound leaving behind a silence. 

Ruth raised an eyebrow and sat at the head of the table. She always looked like she belonged there. “Forgive me for noticing, Al, but just now you seemed to bristle a little. Is it the name you don’t like? Or its connotations?”

“What name?”

“Boy. I’ve noticed that’s what your father calls you. I understand if it’s a term of endearment, but frankly I wouldn’t like it if I were in your place. You’re a man now. The name must make you feel belittled.”

There was a silence as they both sipped their tea. Al could hear the chickens squabbling in the garden. “There,” he said. “You’ll get nearly three times the download speed now.”

“Thank you very much. That means nothing to me. You’re staying with Joe Penhale now, aren’t you?”

Al grinned and leaned back in his chair so its front legs were raised off the ground. “Do you just have a giant gossip ring in the village, or does living out here in the wild like an oracle give you some power of divination?”

“Did you not know I’m a psychiatrist? I just read your mind, that’s all.” She gave a wry smile that, had Al not known her so well, would barely have registered. “I only ask because you could do each other good, you know. You can’t only associate with old bats like me. I think, if you made an effort with each other, that you’d have more in common than you think.”

Al gathered up their mugs and took them to the sink. There was a small vase on the windowsill filled with common garden weeds. Buttercups, daisies, dog rose, cowslips. He couldn’t quite picture Ruth picking flowers. “Like what?”

She had made to leave but stopped in the doorway and turned to look at him. “I suppose you’ll find out.”

*

Al stopped by the restaurant on his way back to Joe’s place and wondered, as he descended the death-trap stone steps, whether he would ever have a ‘his place.’

“There you are, boy! Now all this slacking won’t get you nowhere in life, take it from your Dad. Come and help me now.”

Al caught the apron that was tossed to him but didn’t put it on. He followed his father over to a table where he was filling salt and pepper shakers. There were so many things he wanted to say that he didn’t say anything at all. He wanted to say, maybe, that though he loved him he was gnawed always by the terror of being like him. Wanted to explain that maybe he’d reached a point in his life where it was easier to love from a distance.

He took a container of table salt and began pouring it into a glass shaker that was sticky on the bottom.

“How much that wily old woman paying you then?”

“Ruth?”

“Aye, that one.”

Al screwed the metal cap on the shaker he’d just filled and moved onto the next. “Almost double minimum wage.”

His dad pulled his face in and raised his eyebrows. “That’s not bad now then, is it? When’s some of that going to start coming my way, eh boy?”

Normally Al would laugh it off and in doing so make the question mean nothing. He opened his mouth to answer and closed it again. Blue eyes met brown across the table. Some of the salt he was pouring spilt across his hand and found an open cut where it settled, stinging. 

*

“Joe?”

“In here, Al. Sit tight and I’ll make you some eggs. Wasn’t sure when you were coming back so I didn’t add any for you—waste not want not and all that—but it won’t take me a moment.”

Al ducked under the doorframe and made his way over to Joe’s kitchen table. There was a table cloth on it that hadn’t been there yesterday. It smelt like washing powder.

The sun was just setting between the cupped hands of the port. He pointed to it with his chin. “Silver bridge.”

Joe turned around and a bit of egg flew unnoticed off his spatula. He glanced out the window at the long, glittering streak of sunlight that stretched from the beach to the dusk horizon and smiled. “All the way to the sun.” 

Al watched his back after he’d turned back around. He was still in uniform, and looked reassuringly solid. He hummed lowly, almost inaudibly, as he cooked. The silence settled around them both like a creature curling up for the evening.

Later, they washed the dishes side by side—he drying, Joe scrubbing. Al turned to look at the neat profile next to him. “Joe?”

Joe made a noise of affirmation and scraped with his thumbnail at a stubborn bit of egg stuck in the frying pan. 

Al set a plate very carefully on top of another he’d just dried. “When do you think we become men? I mean, when is a boy a man? I’m not a boy. Am I? I feel like I might not be, but then…I don’t know. It seems like I wouldn’t need to be much removed from myself to be. Or something.”

Joe was looking at him. Al reached across him and pulled the plug out of the sink to avoid making eye contact. His hand brushed against Joe’s under the water. Or maybe just a bit of egg.

“I don’t know, Al. Maybe after we leave home, or maybe after we undergo some personal hero’s journey. Probably it has something to do with learning to survive in nature—weathering the elements, as it were. It probably helps to spend some time in a tent. Or sleeping al fresco, which is Greek for outside.” He paused, then crossed the room to pull the curtains. The last of the sun had been swallowed by the sea. “Or maybe it’s in the eyes of the people around you. My parents still make me feel like a boy.” He turned to face Al, his hands resting on the back of a dining room chair. “But there are some people that have made me—or do make me—feel like a man. My wife did. Others do too.”

Al looked down at the teaspoon he was holding and realised he’d unconsciously polished it to a mirror-shine. 

*

That night Joe stood in his door again. Al looked up and dog-eared the page of his book. “No fire hazards tonight, Joe.”

“Just checking. Constant vigilance, as they say.”

“They do.”

There was a pause.

Joe shifted his weight to his other foot. “What you reading?”

Al looked at the book in his hands. He had no idea what he was reading. It was hard to take in words when you were listening for footfalls on the stairs. “Just a book,” he said. 

Joe nodded sagely. “Yes. Keeping your brain active. All the better for hearing any wrongdoings in the night—murder, burglary, thieving, you know the sort. Well, keep an ear out.” He stood straighter and crossed the corridor to his bedroom. Al heard the door creak closed slowly, and the hesitation of the lock as it was pulled back just before it could fully shut. He could see a vertical crack of light on the corridor wall.

Al waited for a few minutes then put his book down on his nightstand, stood, and crossed over to Joe’s door. Through the crack, he could see Joe hanging up tomorrow’s uniform on the front of his wardrobe in the approximate shape of a person. He bent and placed his shoes neatly underneath each hanging trouser leg. Al pulled open the door and let it creak into the night-silence.

Joe turned to look at him and Al noticed, for the first time, that Joe had the face of a man. There was something steady in his eyes. He held out his hand and Al went to him, took it, placed his other on the underside of Joe’s jaw. 

“Al Large,” Joe said, almost inaudibly. 

“PC Penhale,” he replied, which brought a smile to Joe’s face that he felt under his hand like a gift for which he had no words. He kissed him, then, and felt Joe’s hands run reach immediately around to his back as though he’d been wanting to do just that for a long time.

Al felt that if there were a moment in his life, a single moment he had to life in for the rest of his days, it would be that one, with the quiet settling thick around the village, and the orange-gold light of Joe’s single lamp, and the warmth of his pulse under his hand, and its quickening.


End file.
